Browserless vs Scrapeless
Browserless is a browser API you can also run yourself: Chrome, Firefox and WebKit over Puppeteer, Playwright, BrowserQL or REST, with sessions of up to 60 minutes. Scrapeless sells a stealth Chromium built for scraping, billed per browser-hour, with a random fingerprint, CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies in every session.
The companies and products
Browserless
Browserless calls itself a cloud browser automation platform: managed headless browsers you connect to with one line of code.
You point existing Puppeteer, Playwright or Selenium code at a Browserless WebSocket URL, or use BrowserQL, its GraphQL language with stealth and CAPTCHA solving, REST endpoints for screenshots, PDFs and scraping, and an MCP server. Sessions are short (2 to 60 minutes by plan), and only the browser profile can be kept between them. It is a browser product, not a general sandbox: you get a browser, not a shell or root on the machine, so this page compares where the two overlap, which is agents that browse.
Scrapeless
Scrapeless is a web scraping company that sells Agent Browser, a managed cloud browser, along with AI scrapers, a web unlocker and proxies.
Scrapeless Agent Browser is a different kind of product from boat: you get a Chromium browser in their cloud that you reach over a CDP WebSocket with Puppeteer or Playwright, an MCP server or their agent-browser CLI. Each session gets a random fingerprint, CAPTCHA solving and a residential proxy, and you pay per browser-hour plus proxy traffic. It is built for teams that scrape or automate many websites, not a machine to run their own code on.
Which use cases each one fits
For each use case, Battleships prices every sandbox provider on the same workload and sorts them from the cheapest monthly bill up. “19th cheapest of 367” means 18 of the other 366 providers run that workload, with every feature it needs, for less. “With limits” means the provider runs it but misses something, so it is listed after every full match. Open a use case for its whole ranking and what each provider misses.
| Use case and its workload | Browserless: price rank | Scrapeless: price rank | boat: price rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software factory 100 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 2,200 sessions of 8 h a month A coding agent needs a shell, Docker and a disk, and neither Browserless nor Scrapeless gives a shell, so builds and tests fit boat. | 170th of 367, with limits $1,771 a month | 96th of 367, with limits $868 a month | 3rd cheapest of 367 $634 a month |
| Always-on AI employees 50 machines 24/7 · 2 vCPU / 4 GB An assistant that runs all month outlives a Browserless session of 60 minutes and a Scrapeless session of minutes; boat has no session cap on paid plans. | 297th of 366, with limits $6,170 a month | 224th of 366, with limits $2,628 a month | 5th cheapest of 366 $657 a month |
| Code interpreter bursts 100 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 200,000 sessions of 1 min a month | 267th of 345, with limits $350 a month | 246th of 345, with limits $249 a month | 186th of 345, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Sandboxes for your users 300 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 23 min a month Giving each of your users a sandbox means a machine they can run code on, which neither browser product sells. | 264th of 361, with limits $1,490 a month | 354th of 361, with limits $741 a month | Cheapest of 361 $209 a month |
| RL rollouts 1,000 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 1,000,000 sessions of 3 min a month | 279th of 360, with limits $8,600 a month | 249th of 360, with limits $3,580 a month | 34th of 360, with limits $2,000 a month |
| Agent evals 250 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 15,000 sessions of 20 min a month | 247th of 364, with limits $350 a month | 347th of 364, with limits $399 a month | 10th cheapest of 364 $200 a month |
| CI runners 40 at once · 8 vCPU / 16 GB · 6,000 sessions of 12 min a month | 241st of 377, with limits $140 a month | 229th of 377, with limits $97 a month | 4th cheapest of 377 $86 a month |
| 24/7 dev boxes 1 machine 24/7 · 4 vCPU / 8 GB A dev box has to keep its files and processes, and both browsers keep only a browser profile between sessions, so this fits boat. | 336th of 368, with limits $350 a month | 234th of 368, with limits $59 a month | 18th cheapest of 368 $26 a month |
| Computer-use agents 50 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 20,000 sessions of 15 min a month Both browsers let an agent act on web pages only, while boat streams a 60fps Linux desktop where an agent can use any app. | 141st of 369, with limits $350 a month | 122nd of 369, with limits $274 a month | 6th cheapest of 369 $200 a month |
| Browser-use agents 50 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 30,000 sessions of 10 min a month All three fit: Browserless and Scrapeless give a managed browser to drive over CDP, and boat gives Chromium on a full VM where the agent can also run code. | 19th cheapest of 367 $350 a month | 14th cheapest of 367 $274 a month | 7th cheapest of 367 $200 a month |
| Scraping & bots (startup scale) 50 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 100,000 sessions of 3 min a month Both browsers fit at startup scale; Browserless adds REST endpoints for screenshots and PDFs, Scrapeless adds ready-made AI scrapers, and boat gives each bot a machine with a disk. | 47th cheapest of 346 $478 a month | 33rd cheapest of 346 $370 a month | 6th cheapest of 346 $90 a month |
| Mass scraping & bots (undetectable) 1,000 at once · 1 vCPU / 2 GB · 3,000,000 sessions of 2 min a month Scrapeless fits best here, with fingerprints, free CAPTCHA solving and residential IPs in every session; Browserless has BrowserQL stealth too, while boat uses datacenter IPs. | 20th of 338, with limits $17,150 a month | 6th of 338, with limits $7,020 a month | 71st of 338, with limits $1,800 a month |
| Parallel red teaming 200 at once · 2 vCPU / 4 GB · 5,000 sessions of 30 min a month | 247th of 360, with limits $350 a month | 200th of 360, with limits $199 a month | 2nd cheapest of 360 $200 a month |
| GPU eval jobs 10 at once · 8 vCPU / 32 GB · 500 sessions of 30 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
| macOS agents 5 at once · 4 vCPU / 8 GB · 1,000 sessions of 20 min a month | Can't run it | Can't run it | Can't run it |
Key features
| Feature | Browserless | Scrapeless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kind of product | Managed headless Chrome, Firefox and WebKit, plus BrowserQL, REST APIs and an MCP server | Managed stealth Chromium over a CDP WebSocket, plus AI scrapers, a web unlocker and proxies | A full Linux VM per sandbox, with a desktop and Chromium inside |
| Shell, code and Docker | No shell or SSH in a session; you can self-host the Docker image on your own machines | No shell on the machine running the browser | Root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm on every machine, with its own kernel |
| Session length | 2 minutes on Free, 15 on Prototyping, 30 on Starter, 60 on Scale | 3 minutes by default, 15 minutes recommended at most, longer allowed | No cap on paid plans; you set the time to live |
| State between sessions | Persisted sessions keep cookies, localStorage and cache for 1 to 90 days by plan | Browser profiles keep cookies, storage, cache and logins, saved when the session closes | The whole disk is saved every minute and on stop; a stopped sandbox costs nothing |
| Fork | No fork; many sessions can start from one saved profile | No fork; several sessions can load one profile, and only the last to close is saved | Fork a running sandbox with its disk |
| Stealth and CAPTCHAs | BrowserQL stealth with fingerprint mitigations; CAPTCHA solving at 10 units per solve | Random fingerprint per session; CAPTCHA solving included at no extra charge | Chromium on datacenter IPs; no fingerprint rotation or CAPTCHA solving |
| Proxies | Built-in residential and datacenter proxies paid in units; your own proxy on paid plans | Over 70 million residential IPs in 195 countries, down to state and city; your own proxy on paid plans | None managed; you can run your own proxy client inside the VM |
| Browsers at once | 2 on Free; 10, 40 and 100 on the annual Prototyping, Starter and Scale plans | 50, 100, 200 or 400 sessions by plan, custom above that | One VM per agent with Chromium inside; up to 90 starts a minute before bursts queue |
| Ready-made tools | REST endpoints that return screenshots, PDFs and scraped content in one call | AI Scraper tasks for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and more, plus crawl and search tools over MCP | None; you write or run your own |
| Live view | Live URLs that hand a session to a person for a login or 2FA step | Live URL to watch and control the browser, plus optional session recording | A full Linux desktop streamed at 60fps, or Chrome alone; embed it, record it |
| Agents | Its own managed browser agent (Agent Run API, beta), up to 15 minutes and 60 steps per turn | A CLI skill and an MCP server so an agent on your own machine can drive the cloud browser | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more preinstalled, with a prompt, steer and events API |
| Secrets | 1Password integration fills logins into the page | Credential store and 1Password link that fill website logins into the browser | AI credentials proxy: real keys never enter the sandbox, for model providers and any HTTPS API |
| Hosting | Fixed WebSocket and HTTPS endpoints; no ports to host on | No way to serve your own ports | HTTPS URLs for up to 50 ports, token-protected; raw TCP; own IP |
| Self-hosting | Open source Docker image under SSPL-1.0; commercial use needs a license | Hosted only | Hosted only |
Every feature Battleships tracks (43)
| Feature | Browserless | Scrapeless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full VM (own kernel) | No | Not published | Yes |
| Docker inside | No | No | Yes |
| Nested virtualization | No | No | Yes |
| Root | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Systemd | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Desktop GUI | No | No | Yes |
| Browser | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Computer-use API | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSH | No | No | Yes |
| Persistent disk | No | No | Yes |
| Pause/resume | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic snapshots | No | No | Yes |
| Fork/clone | No | No | Yes |
| Live fork (no pause) | No | No | Yes |
| Memory fork | No | No | No |
| Custom image (Docker or snapshot) | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| ≥24 h sessions | No | No | Yes |
| Idle auto-stop | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wake on request | No | No | No |
| HTTPS preview URLs | No | No | Yes |
| Raw TCP inbound | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Public IPv4 | No | No | No |
| Egress allowlist | Yes | No | No |
| Secret proxy | No | No | Yes |
| Secret proxy for any API | No | No | Yes |
| Preinstalled agents | Yes | No | Yes |
| Agent harness API | No | No | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | No |
| GPU | Yes | No | No |
| Windows | No | No | No |
| Arm64 | No | No | No |
| Self-hosting | Yes | No | No |
| BYOC | Yes | No | No |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Scoped API keys | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Spend limits | Not published | Not published | Yes |
| Usage per sandbox (API) | No | No | Yes |
| Audit logs | Not published | Not published | No |
| SSO | Yes | Yes | No |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| HIPAA | Yes | Yes | No |
| EU data residency | Yes | No | Yes |
| Zero data retention | Not published | Not published | Yes |
Performance
There is no comparable measurement for either one. Browserless and Scrapeless do not publish the vCPU or memory behind a browser session, and neither is in StarSling's CPU benchmark. boat scored 26.69 runs per second on the hpc-sandbox-benchmarks Node.js test at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Node.js build-and-test loop at 4 vCPU / 8 GB, higher is better. Measured with the open hpc-sandbox-benchmarks suite. Browserless and Scrapeless have no published run in this suite yet, so there is no like-for-like number to compare.
Pricing in five scenarios
Each bill is priced from the providers' public price lists by the open Battleships engine, with the cheapest plan that runs the scenario.
| Scenario | Browserless, a month | Scrapeless, a month | boat, a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, 8 hours a day, 22 days a month, files kept between days | $350 · Scale annual · with limits | $399 · Business · with limits | $20 · $20/mo |
| One agent that never stops 4 vCPU / 8 GB, 50 GB disk, running 24/7 all month | $350 · Scale annual · with limits | $399 · Business · with limits | $26 · $20/mo |
| 50 agents in parallel 50 machines of 4 vCPU / 8 GB at once, 8-hour sessions, 1,100 sessions a month, Docker inside | $1,026 · Scale annual · with limits | $570 · Business · with limits | $317 · $20/mo × 3 seats |
| Sandboxes for your users 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 30,000 sessions of 10 minutes a month, up to 300 at once | $410 · Scale annual · with limits | $399 · Business · with limits | $200 · $100/mo × 2 seats |
| 1,000 short jobs at once 2 vCPU / 4 GB, 1,000 at once, 3 minutes each, 200,000 jobs a month | $1,400 · Scale annual · with limits | $716 · Business · with limits | $2,000 · $2000/mo · with limits |
Browserless: Browserless bills in units: one unit is up to 30 seconds of a connected browser, and a reconnect starts a new block. Plans include 20,000, 180,000 or 500,000 units a month, and proxy traffic and CAPTCHA solves use the same units.
Scrapeless: Scrapeless plans of $49, $199 or $399 a month are prepaid into a balance that does not roll over. Browser time runs from $0.09 an hour down to $0.072, and residential proxy traffic is billed per GB on top, from $1.80.
Scrapeless: Plans start at $20 a month, and the whole fee is usage credit spent per second on running sandboxes. A stopped sandbox costs nothing and keeps its disk.
Limits in those scenarios
None of the five scenarios fits Browserless or Scrapeless as written, because each asks for a general machine and both sell a browser session with no shell, no disk that stays and no published size. Session length rules out the workday and always-on agents on both: 60 minutes on Browserless Scale, minutes by default on Scrapeless. Concurrency is the other limit: Browserless Scale annual stops at 100 browsers at once and Scrapeless Business at 400, so 1,000 short jobs at once need a custom plan on either. On boat that burst is the one that does not fit, since bursts above 90 starts a minute are queued.
| Scenario | Browserless | Scrapeless | boat |
|---|---|---|---|
| One coding agent, workdays |
|
| None that bite |
| One agent that never stops |
|
| None that bite |
| 50 agents in parallel |
|
| None that bite |
| Sandboxes for your users |
|
| None that bite |
| 1,000 short jobs at once |
|
|
|
Which one should you use?
Use Browserless when
you want a browser API you can also run on your own servers, sessions of up to an hour, Firefox or WebKit as well as Chrome, or one-call REST screenshots and PDFs.
- Run it on your own machines. For teams whose browsers must stay in their own network: the Browserless core is open source and runs from one Docker image.
- Longer sessions, more browsers. For scripts that need more than a few minutes: Scale sessions run up to 60 minutes, in Chrome, Firefox or WebKit.
- One-call REST endpoints. For jobs that only need a screenshot, a PDF or a page's content: one REST call, no browser script, with a San Francisco region.
Use Scrapeless when
you scrape many sites with strong bot checks and want fingerprints, CAPTCHA solving and residential proxies included in every session, at high concurrency.
- Stealth in every session. For sites with strong bot checks: each session gets a random fingerprint and CAPTCHA solving at no extra charge.
- Residential IPs in 195 countries. For scraping that has to look local: over 70 million residential IPs, pinned to a country, state or city.
- Many short sessions at once. For high-volume scraping: up to 400 browsers at once on self-serve plans, billed per browser-hour, plus ready-made AI scrapers.
Where boat fits
If what you are really running is agents that browse and then do work with what they find, both of these give you only the browser. boat gives each agent a full Linux VM with Chromium and a 60fps desktop inside, plus a shell, Docker and a disk that stays, for as long as the task takes. For heavy scraping of sites that block bots, Browserless or Scrapeless is the better tool, and an agent on boat can call either one.
A whole machine around the browser
Browserless and Scrapeless give your code a browser and no shell, so an agent that has to clone a repo, run docker compose or start a dev server needs a second machine, and every file crosses between the two.
Runs as long as the task, keeps its disk
A Browserless session ends after 60 minutes at most, and a Scrapeless one after 3 minutes by default, both keeping only a browser profile. boat has no session cap on paid plans and saves the whole disk every minute.
Agents inside, driven from outside
Browserless offers a beta agent capped at 15 minutes and 60 steps a turn, and Scrapeless expects you to host the agent yourself. boat preinstalls Claude Code, Codex and others, and its credentials proxy keeps API keys out of the sandbox.
Use boat when your agent does more than browse: it needs a shell, files, Docker, a desktop or a server next to the browser, and has to keep working for hours or days. Compare it one to one: boat vs Browserless and boat vs Scrapeless.
Questions people ask
Is Browserless cheaper than Scrapeless?
It depends on the job, and neither fits our scenarios as a general machine. For 50 agents in parallel Scrapeless comes to $570 against $1,026, and for 1,000 short jobs at once $716 against $1,400. For one agent on workdays Browserless is lower at $350 against $399.
Which one is better at getting past bot checks?
Both have stealth and CAPTCHA solving. Scrapeless gives every session a random fingerprint and residential proxy and includes CAPTCHA solving at no extra charge, while Browserless charges 10 units per solve and bills proxy traffic in units. Scrapeless ranks 6th for mass scraping in our table and Browserless 20th.
Which is faster, Browserless or Scrapeless?
There is no comparable measurement. Neither publishes the CPU or memory behind a browser session, and neither is in the CPU benchmark we use. boat scored 26.69 runs per second at 4 vCPU / 8 GB.
Can Browserless or Scrapeless run Docker or a shell?
No. A hosted session on either gives you a browser, not a shell on the machine. You can self-host the Browserless Docker image, but then it runs on your own server. Every boat sandbox has root, SSH, Docker, systemd and /dev/kvm.
How long can a session run on each?
Browserless allows 2 minutes on Free up to 60 minutes on Scale, with custom limits on Enterprise. Scrapeless defaults to 3 minutes and recommends 15 at most, though longer values can be set. boat has no session cap on paid plans.
Can I self-host Browserless or Scrapeless?
Browserless, yes: its core is open source under SSPL-1.0 and runs from one Docker image, with a paid license for commercial use. Scrapeless is a hosted service only, and so is boat.
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